She looks her fate steadily in the face. Young enough and strong enough yet for work, but with a helpless child upon her hands, what shall she do? She sells promptly her furniture, books, pictures, and jewelry. For the last she has never cared, but Vanderlyn had lavished it upon her during the days she was seeking a divorce. Very rarely has she worn it. With the sum thus raised, she can, for a time, pay her board until she can find employment, and she seeks the most retired house she can find for a refuge.
In bitterness of spirit beyond anything she has ever endured while the honest wife of John Thorndyke, Agnes now feels in almost overwhelming force the folly of the course she has pursued—almost overwhelming, but not quite, for she still believes herself to be Martin Vanderlyn’s lawful wife. Bad as he has proved himself, she as yet has no doubt that he is her lawful husband, and so, in her present abode, she calls herself Mrs. Vanderlyn, with no thought but that she is so honestly, if not wisely.
She has been in her new home rather less than a week, when, passing along the corridor, she meets, coming from a room near her own, two Sisters of Mercy, who have apparently just taken leave of an invalid lady; at least, so she judges from the voice which comes through the open door, saying:
“Good-by, and come again soon, Sisters,” followed by a cough that to her experienced ear sounds like consumption. She has heard that cough in the night when she has been wakeful, and she hears it again many times this day. She thinks of the invalid often, with her old instinct of sympathy for the sick—a sympathy which of late years has not been much called forth in her retirement. The next day, coming in from her quest for employment, she meets on the porch a gentleman who, she feels almost sure, is a Catholic priest. He enters the house at the same time with herself, and, proceeding before her up the stairs, passes directly and quietly to the room occupied by her sick neighbor. “She is a Catholic, then,” says Agnes to herself; “but that does not matter. I wonder if I could do her any good?” And she acknowledges to herself a very strong desire to see her neighbor, and offer any service in her power. But she does not act at once. Her peculiar position makes her shrink from meeting strangers or forming acquaintances. Still, the cough strikes upon her ear appealingly, all the more that there comes no sound of any voices from the room, save when the priest or the Sisters of Mercy are there. She knows her neighbor must be alone, and, she suspects, lonely also, for many hours. She resolves to go to see her, and take little George, thinking, in the fondness of her mother’s heart, that his pretty ways may divert the sick woman.
But who is she, and what is her name? Agnes asks this of her landlady the first time she finds that everbusy and worried woman alone.
“The sick lady in the front room? Why, she is your namesake, perhaps a relation.” And the landlady eyes keenly her questioner, thinking her curiosity about both of her boarders will now be gratified, as she slowly adds: “She is a Mrs. Vanderlyn, as well as yourself.”
Agnes feels herself trembling and almost choking at the swift rush of conviction coming over her as to who this Mrs. Vanderlyn is: The priest and the Sisters of Mercy! Martin Vanderlyn’s wife was a Catholic! She can hardly command her voice to ask:
“Is she a widow?”
“I guess so, but she hasn’t said so,” replied the landlady. “She has no friends, except them horrid spooks of nuns and that there sneakin’ priest; I do declare I’m ashamed to see ‘em a-comin’ in and out o’ my door—but you be’ent a Catholic, be you?” she says, in sudden alarm, lest her burst of confidence has been misplaced. Agnes reassures her by saying: